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Political author and historian Michael Lind to speak at St. Olaf

Professor and political writer Michael Lind will speak on campus March 19 as part of the Institute for Freedom and Community’s spring series, “Who is my Neighbor? Immigration, Freedom, and Community”.

His conversation with Morrison Family Director of the Institute for Freedom & Community and Professor of Religion and Philosophy Edmund Santurri, titled “Immigration and the New Class War,” will begin at 7 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons. It is free and open to the public, and will be streamed live and available on demand online.

“Lind characterizes himself as a ‘small-d democratic nationalist’ in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among other things, this means that for Lind American immigration policy should be shaped with an eye to American national interest,” explains Santurrri.

Lind is a co-founder of New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., and has been an editor or staff writer for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New Republic, and The National Interest. He is currently a visiting professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Lind is the author of numerous books of history, political journalism, fiction, poetry, and children’s literature, including Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (2003); The American Way of Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life (2006); Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (2012); and, most recently, Big Is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business (2018, with Robert D. Atkinson).

Lind earned his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in International Relations from Yale University.

Established at St. Olaf in 2014, the Institute for Freedom and Community encourages free inquiry and meaningful debate of important political and social issues. Through its range of programming for students, faculty, and the general public, the Institute offers a distinctive opportunity to cultivate civil discourse within the context of the liberal arts.

Please visit the Institute’s website for the full list of spring speakers, and sign up for the quarterly newsletter to receive regular updates and information about Institute programming.